Welcome to the weekly news roundup! Below are the top stories we’ve read or shared this week affecting our industry.

Tuesday: 72% of freelancers who also have “regular” jobs want to quit and work entirely for themselves, so says a new study. Why? Freedom to work when they choose. (SIA Daily News)

Tuesday: This article offers some tips to get you settled into a new temp position quickly and happily. Keep these in mind when you start your next assignment. (Payscale)

Wednesday: A new court case this week helped further define the differences between an employee vs. an independent contractor. Learn how to ensure you’re classified correctly with some behavioral, financial and relationship questions. (Workforce)

Wednesday: More research on how CIOs are utilizing flexible labor, and this study expects this number to keep growing. Skills in demand include enterprise architecture, business analysis and mobile solutions. (SIA Daily News)

Have a great weekend, everyone.

(Today’s guest post is by Jim Brozny, Fieldglass’ account services director.)

I recently co-presented with one of our customers, Jon Kesman of Reed Elsevier, at the ISM Conference in Dallas. This large annual event, which is geared toward supply chain management professionals, covered a myriad of topics, and our presentation was part of the Services Procurement track.

During our session, Jon shared Reed Elsevier’s contingent workforce program journey (case study available here). Jon has worked hard to establish a well-run, results-oriented program within the framework of Reed Elsevier’s corporate culture. I see Jon and his team’s willingness to engage early and often with their stakeholders as a major key to the company’s successful program. For Reed Elsevier, stakeholders included everyone from HR, finance, legal and IT to the hiring managers and the C-suite.

Engaging all these groups is the first step in a carefully thought-out program plan. Having the support of these folks to enable proper change management is step two. Kicking off your program planning and implementation in this way will always be the fastest and most effective way to achieve results, proven when Jon and his team launched the program in the US, and then again a few years later in the UK. Gareth Druce, professional services director for Reed Elsevier, shared in detail how the company was able to successfully expand the program into the UK during a webinar last month.

Read More »

(Today’s guest post is by Arjun Dutt, Business Intelligence Solutions. This is the fourth post in our Measuring Up series on how to get more out of your VMS reporting.)

Earlier in this series, I outlined an alternative way of looking at cost savings metrics. But another metric that can be used to identify cost savings opportunities at a more granular level is hiring patterns within the buyer population. Many organizations, especially those without an MSP present, tend to look only at the final rate of a hired worker against the targeted rate of the rate card.

During a recent business review to identify cost savings opportunities, we discovered an interesting anomaly for a specific job title at a handful of locations. The rate variances for the same job title and description were unusually large, even when accounting for location-based adjustments. Consider the following data we were able to visualize:

In response to this behavior, the client implemented Fieldglass’ active rate guidance, which gives hiring managers access to real-time rate information that can be used to select a candidate. As a result of this implementation, hiring managers: Read More »

Welcome to the weekly news roundup! Below are the top stories we’ve read or shared this week affecting our industry.

Tuesday: A camera crew stopped by the Fieldglass booth during the ISM Conference last week. Find out what our director of account services, Jim Brozny, had to say about Fieldglass and the show. (My Purchasing Center)

Wednesday: Looking for stability, benefits and opportunities without the typical bureaucracy, invisibility or slow-pace of large organizations? Check out the 10 best Fortune 500 companies to work for. (AOL Jobs)

Thursday: Here’s a great article on the way HP is addressing its cost-cutting objectives – and transforming its business processes at the same time. Think: best-of-breed SaaS players. (Enterprise Irregulars)

Today: A little Friday fun… how much are you planning to shell out on Mom this year for Mother’s Day? Together we’re expected to spend over $20 billion. (Forbes)

Have a great weekend, everyone. For those celebrating Mother’s Day, enjoy your special plans!

(Today’s guest post is by Arjun Dutt, Business Intelligence Solutions. This is the third post in our Measuring Up series on how to get more out of your VMS reporting.)

Worker quality is an increasingly important program goal for many Fieldglass customers. It also happens to be one of the hardest objectives to measure, especially if your program is relatively new. The most common measurement of quality is the comparison between positive attrition (e.g. conversions to FTE) to negative attrition (e.g. workers terminating prematurely). This measurement is challenging because it’s a reflection of how the program has performed historically. More importantly, measuring worker quality only by temp-to-hire conversion doesn’t allow a company to proactively address worker quality while they are still, well, workers.

A customer recently contacted us after discovering that negative attrition percentages for her program were increasing by three percent to four percent every month. Concerned the trend was indicative of low quality workers from her supplier base, she wanted our help to determine if she should penalize her suppliers and possibly bring new ones into the mix.

In looking at the data however, we discovered that the problem laid in the customer’s rate cards; suppliers were not able to effectively find the right candidates because of restrictive pricing. As a result, Fieldglass helped the customer implement a series of checkpoints throughout the process to monitor and improve candidate and worker quality, including these three major process changes:

1. Rather than provide a uniform increase across the board, the customer decided to increase rate card flexibility, allowing suppliers to submit the best candidates for the position without being hampered by the rate. Suppliers would be measured by how often their candidates were above the target rate versus how often those same candidates were selected for interviews and/or hire. This process also enabled the customer to gather better data on how competitive her rate cards were with what was available on the market.




2. Implementing detailed qualifications on the job requisition gave the customer better visibility into how well each candidate was meeting the hiring manager’s needs. As suppliers answered each skill requirement individually with more detail, the program office was able to shortlist candidates that better met the requirements. Hiring managers were also able to rank candidates and provide better feedback to the suppliers for future improvement.




3. To better measure quality throughout a worker’s lifecycle, hiring managers were asked to complete a worker evaluation 30 days into his/her assignment and at three-month intervals thereafter. This allowed the program office to proactively identify quality issues during the worker’s assignment, rather than at the end.

The customer found that these three process changes led to higher percentages of on-time assignment completions and more temp-to-hire conversions. The company was also able to successfully improve positive attrition month over month while minimizing costs to the program.

How does your program measure quality? Do you struggle with this metric? Reach out to us at info@fieldglass.com to continue the discussion on this topic.

(The other posts in this series can be found here and here.)

Welcome to the weekly news roundup! Below are the top stories we’ve read or shared this week affecting our industry.

Monday: A whooping 60 MILLION people will be freelancers, contractors or temps. Are you an employer without a strategy to take advantage of this growing workforce? Check out these tips. (Recruiter)

Monday: A rise in temps isn’t news, but it may be surprising to you how many retirees are among the contingent population. Temp work can be particularly attractive to older workers, since they often have access to Medicare and a lack of benefits isn’t a deal breaker. (MarketWatch)

Monday: Not all freelancers work from the neighborhood coffee shop. Find out about some of the common places contractors go to get the job done. (CBS News)

Wednesday: Thinking of taking your program global but not sure where to start? Staffing Industry Analysts’ Advisory Group has compiled a list of questions you should ask, based on feedback from some of the top global contingent workforce experts. (CWS 3.0)

Wednesday: If you think that the workforce is shaped by each different generation of workers, this article may make you think again. (Workforce)

Have a great weekend, everyone!

(Today’s guest post is by Arjun Dutt, Business Intelligence Solutions. This is the second post in a new series called Measuring Up on how to get more out of your VMS reporting.)

Creating program efficiency is a top 3 goal for nearly every Fieldglass customer. One of the most common questions we get asked is how to effectively reduce cycle times. There’s no doubt that hiring workers quickly is good for business – it increases overall productivity and improves hiring manager satisfaction. However, there exists an age-old struggle to balance speedy hiring with quality workers while still completing compliance-related tasks such as approvals and onboarding.

Many organizations automatically place the onus of reducing cycle times on the Program Management Office (PMO) or, and is more often the case, onto the suppliers’ shoulders. These organizations often fail to investigate how they themselves are contributing to high processing times. Below I’ll share how one customer was able to drastically cut cycle times by looking in the mirror.

To set the stage, a large majority of programs are set up as “serial processors.” In other words, steps in the process occur one after the other, with each step dependent on the previous one. A typical hiring process looks something like this:

One customer recently examined how long it took for requisitions to be approved as well as for suppliers to submit the ultimately-hired candidate. They discovered that while every requisition went through a financial approval, on average less than 0.2 percent were rejected annually. Read More »

(Today’s guest post is by Arjun Dutt, Business Intelligence Solutions.)

Many US organizations have a common misconception about global growth: international markets are less mature. It’s not uncommon to hear that EMEA is five to six years behind the US in how contingent workforces are managed. However that’s certainly not the case, as Bryan Pena of Staffing Industry Analysts, Liz Harper of Brightfield Strategies and I discussed last week during our Making It Work: Best Practices for Expanding your Contingent Workforce Program Internationally webinar. These markets are not less mature than those in North America — they’re just different. During the webinar, we talked about how organizations can better prepare for global expansion by educating themselves and planning for these cultural nuances before deploying their contingent workforce programs overseas.

Harper provided some background on EMEA-specific legislation influencing the way contingent programs operate. The Data Protection Directive, Health and Safety Directive, Temporary & Agency Workers Directive (AWD) and the Fixed Term Worker Directive all significantly affect how organizations are able to expand their programs globally, and prudent organizations must take these laws into account.

But outside of any legal considerations, there are cultural nuances to change management to consider before deployment as well. Harper noted a few examples of how the national culture impacts the corporate culture:

• Power-Oriented Culture: Countries like Japan and India fit into this quadrant and value the dialogue between stakeholders rather than what’s being discussed. In other words, these countries want to know who’s attending a meeting rather than what will be discussed.

Read More »

Welcome to the weekly news roundup! Below are the top stories we’ve read or shared this week affecting our industry.

Tuesday: As an Illinois Technology Association member, we appreciate all the work the ITA does to help promote and grow the Chicago tech community. Read here about their new focus on larger firms. (Crain’s Chicago Business)

Wednesday: By 2016, almost 80% of the workforce will be comprised of millennials. This study explains their work habits and needs, but points out one consistency between this group and non-millennials alike – everyone wants more flexible work hours and the ability to work remotely. (Talent Management)

Wednesday: Just another example of how fine the line is between the various worker types. Learn what to do when your consultants don’t quality as independent contractors but still insist on being treated as such. (Collabrus)

Wednesday: Today’s modern job seekers don’t respond to outdated recruiter tactics. Take a peek inside how it all works and learn how to recruit the best workers. (CWS 3.0)

Thursday: Just for fun… we all know what it’s like to be tied to technology. This article outlines 21 bad habits – and why we should break them. (CIO)

Have a great weekend, everyone!

(Today’s guest post is by Sara Sullivan, Fieldglass’ director of sales engineers.)

Although organizations have built a successful business case for a VMS and understand basic functionalities, they struggle to understand the differentiators that separate one provider from another. Any VMS worth its salt is capable of handling job requisition creation, the timesheet approval process and basic reporting functionality, among other things. But how do organizations uncover the unique features and functionality that truly set one provider apart from the rest?

The product demonstration is the opportunity for VMS providers to showcase the user interface and walk through functionality that will help lower costs, improve efficiency, increase quality and ensure compliance. Our new whitepaper, Essential Questions to Ask During a Product Demonstration for a VMS, can help you hone in on the topics you should cover and the specific questions you should ask. We also provide a scorecard template to help you prioritize the functionality most important to your organization.

Here are some additional tips for getting the most out of your product demonstration with a VMS provider:

• Know what to expect: Whether you’ve gone through the RFP process or not, the product demonstration is the first opportunity to see the interface and walk through job requisition creation, candidate vetting, work orders, timesheet approvals, reporting, social capabilities, administration and global expertise. Map out what you’d like to see beforehand and whenever possible, provide that roadmap to the VMS provider.

Read More »